page_title: Babworth
section_title: Babworth Hall
hierarchical_section_title: Babworth / Babworth Hall
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Humphry Repton
context_page_description: Babworth is a village and civil parish in the Bassetlaw district of Nottinghamshire, England, about 1½ miles west of Retford. According to the 2001 census the parish had a population of 1,329, including Ranby and rising to 1,687 at the 2011 Census. In addition to the village of Babworth the parish also includes Ranby.
context_section_description: Babworth Hall is a Grade II listed Eighteenth Century House and Parklands. Babworth Hall itself stands in the southern half of the park and is a three storey building of red brick and ashlar construction that dates from the mid Eighteenth Century, with later alterations by Humphry Repton (1752-1818) one of the last great English landscape designers. Babworth Hall represents an example of an early work of Repton's. His proposed alterations for Babworth were included in The Red Book (1790).
  Piercy describes Babworth Hall in the early 19th century as follows:
  "Babworth Hall, the seat of the Hon. John Bridgeman Simpson (brother to the late Earl of Bradford) is pleasantly situated on an eminence, a short distance from the Retford and Worksop road, about a mile and a quarter from the former place. Its vicinity contains some of the finest scenery in this part of the county, for which, it is, in a great measure, indebted to its present possessor, who, has lately increased the beauty and interest of the place by a fine piece of water, a swiss cottage, &c. Near the church, is the charming little sequestered residence of the Rev. Archdeacon Eyre, the rector, in which, comfort and elegance are blended; and to whose worthy possessor, added to the kind patronage of the Simpson’s family, the parish is much indebted for its internal prosperity."
  — Piercy, John S., The History of Retford in the County of Nottingham (1828)
  Leonard Jacks enthuses about the scene from Babworth Hall:
  "From one point, close to the house, the eye travels over a bit of open landscape, with a foreground of thriving trees, and further away the crown of gently swelling hills. Looking across the bright and gracefully designed gardens, either from the terrace or from the windows inside, one catches the shimmer of water—of a large and pellucid lake, on the other side of which rises a picturesque bank of sandstone, completely covered with rich foliage, save in one or two places where the red of the sandstone peeps out from the thick mass of leaves and branches, acquiring a still ruddier tint in the light of the summer sun."
  — Jacks, Leonard, The Great Houses of Nottinghamshire and the County Families (1881)
  The lake mentioned in the landscaping no longer exists having dried up in the 1960s. This has been variously ascribed to a change in the water table or the action of tree roots breaking the clay lining. An article by the Garden History Society describes an afternoon spent in Babworth Hall in the 1960s when the members were informed that the lake had dried up.
  "The afternoon was spent at Babworth Hall near Retford where, by kind permission of Sir James and Lady Whittaker members were able to see an early example of the work of Humphrey Repton. The party was allowed to inspect the Red Book, dated 1790, and indeed to carry it around the grounds to follow Repton's scheme in its maturity. The planting is still largely intact but the source of the lake has dried up and the site of the lake is now covered by a plantation of willows. The kitchen gardens with their elaborate heating arrangements follow the Repton layout."
  — Quarterly Newsletter of the Garden History Society, No. 8 Summer-Autumn (1968)
  The Hall remained in the Bridgeman Simpson family until the late Nineteenth Century when it was purchased by Colonel Whitaker. The Hall was a convalescent hospital in the First World War. The Hall and its grounds remain in private ownership.
caption: The landscape designer, Humphry Repton
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